Friday, June 16, 2017

WORLD OF AGRICULTURE

The world of agriculture with the presence of competent
agricultural management plus capable labor force – the two pillars of really
productive agribusiness which in reality becomes a composite one through
genuine agricultural Land Reform – merits special attention, given the
significance and implications of the combined social, cultural, and economic role that
agriculture assumes in the economic systems of many countries – as well as its
growing significance in safeguarding the natural environment – with special
relevance to the Philippines which to this date is rightfully considered as
basically an agricultural Country. This
standing reality become quite evident when one leaves metropolitan areas and
goes to provincial territories where agricultural lands appear boundless in
extent and coverage and copious in agricultural produces.

Certain observations come to order:

1. It would not be
hard to think and conclude how peoples would live and how countries could
develop in the utter absence of agriculture – agricultural ventures and
consequent agricultural products.
Agriculture is that necessary and consequential that technology
progressively protects its fruitfulness – such as in terms of water resources
and other basic environmental factors
such as preventing Climate Change.

2. Needless to say,
it is agriculture – when not only wholesome to nature but also beneficial to man
– that usually provides humanity from
food to eat, clothing to wear up to shelters to live in. It is from agricultural benefits that peoples make their living and
Countries have their economic progress.
So it is that taking the standard benefits of agriculture as a matter of
course, is anything but realistic nor
beneficial for all peoples.

3. It is usually the
trio of avarice, carelessness, and callousness in particular, that waste
agricultural wealth, that makes agriculture not only unproductive but even a
natural liability. Farming is not only a
necessary work but also a noble endeavour.
This is why farmers have a rightful dignity of their own. The truth of the matter is that when
agricultural lands are left unprotected and unproductive, elementary logic says
that it is humanity that is the loser.

4. The lesson that
man should have learned many centuries
since is that the saying that man from
earth he comes and to earth he will eventually go back to. This is downright reality, not merely
poetry. It is from the fruits of the
earth that man lives, and to earth he eventually ends up. Earth is truly precious not only because it
foments lives but also provides a place
to rest – eventually to feed the earth so that this in turn continues producing
food for the living.

5. it is becoming
more and more a reality lesson that man should care for the environment so that
this would care for him in return through productive farmland. Climate change slowly but surely contributes
to the detriment of humanity whereas it precisely lessens the quality and
quantity of farm products. And human
greed plus carelessness have much to answer for wasting nature.

Oscar Cruz

About The Blogger

Most Reverend Oscar V. Cruz, D.D. is the Archbishop-Emeritus of Lingayen-Dagupan. He is currently the Judicial Vicar of the National Tribunal of Appeals. He is a prolific writer, having published several dozen books mostly on judicial and moral matters. His most recent book is about the Social Doctrines of the Church. He also has a blog where he posts regularly. He is an avid coin collector and dabbles in woodworking art.